Welcome! I am a PhD candidate in New York University’s Wilf Family Department of Politics, specializing in international political economy and comparative politics.

I study the political consequences of major economic transformations, such as those caused by globalization. My research addresses three questions: how, and under what conditions, economic shocks contribute to major political change; how they shape the formation of political coalitions; and how these coalitions influence policy in the long run. I combine quantitative methods with historical data to answer these questions in the developing world, with a focus on Latin America.

My dissertation examines these questions in three periods of acceleration and reversal of globalization in Latin America: the first wave of globalization, the interwar deglobalization, and the trade liberalization of the 1990s. My job market paper, “Trading Away the Machine,” shows how the export boom triggered by NAFTA weakened the PRI’s clientelistic machine in Mexico. My research has been supported by NYU’s Dean’s Dissertation Fellowship and the Institute for Humane Studies.

Before joining NYU, I received an MA in Social Sciences from the Juan March-Carlos III Institute, and a BA in Economics from Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas (CIDE).

Feel free to reach out at ivan.sanmiguel@nyu.edu.